Student Emotion in Mediated Learning: Comparing a Text, Video, and Video Game

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Although serious games are generally praised by scholars for their potential to enhance teaching and e-learning practices, more empirical evidence is needed to support these accolades. Existing research in this area tends to show that gamified teaching experiences do contribute to significant effects to improve student cognitive, motivational, and behavioural learning outcomes, but these effects are usually small. In addition, less research examines how different types of mediated learning tools compare to one another in influencing student outcomes associated with learning and motivation. As such, a question can be asked in this area: how do video games compare to other types of mediated tools, such as videos or texts, in influencing student emotion outcomes? This study used an experimental design (N = 153) to examine the influence of different types of mass media modalities (text, video, and video game) on college students’ emotions in a mediated learning context. Research examining the impact of video games on instruction has begun to grow, but few studies appropriately acknowledge the nuanced differences between media tools in comparison to one another. Using a media-attributes approach as a lens, this study first compared these mediated tools along the attributional dimensions of textuality, channel, interactivity, and control. This study next tested the impact of each media type on thirteen emotion outcomes. Results showed that six emotion outcomes did not indicate differences between groups (fear, guilt, sadness, shyness, serenity, and general negative emotions). However, six of the tested emotion outcomes did indicate differences between groups with students experiencing higher levels of emotional arousal in both the text and video game conditions (in comparison to the video condition) for the emotions of joviality, self-assurance, attentiveness, surprise, hostility, and general positive emotions. Lastly, students also felt less fatigue in the video game condition. Overall, implications for e-learning suggest that when a message’s content is held constant, both video games and texts may be better in inducing emotional intensity and reducing fatigue than videos alone, which could enhance motivation to learn when teaching is mediated by technology.